NatWest has formed a strategic partnership with Accenture and Amazon Web Services (AWS) to consolidate its fragmented data assets and make technological processes more efficient. The project's goal is to centrally store the data of 20 million customers, thereby responding faster to fraud cases and introducing new services more quickly.

So far, customer information at NatWest is distributed across numerous systems. Manually linking these data complicates analysis and significantly slows response times. In the future, the consolidation of these data should make it possible to issue warnings of newly emerging fraud schemes within a few hours instead of up to five days as before.

The bank sees the move as a key pillar of its long-term digital transformation. Paul Thwaite, CEO of NatWest, described the collaboration with Accenture and AWS as "crucial to our transformation into a technology- and data-driven bank." The institute did not provide information on costs or possible job cuts but made it clear that staff reduction is not the focus.

Major IT Modernizations in the Banking Industry Are Considered Risky. The TSB Case in 2018, Whose Migration to a New IT Platform Ended in a System Collapse, Serves as a Warning to Many Institutions. Nevertheless, Traditional Banks Like Lloyds or NatWest Are Tackling the Complex Renewal of Their Systems, Also to Keep Up with Agile Fintechs Like Monzo and Revolut.

At the same time, the increasing dependence on large tech companies raises new questions. The British financial regulator had already warned of systemic risks in 2023 if central IT service providers like AWS or Microsoft were affected by outages.

For NatWest, which has recently fully disengaged from state ownership after the financial crisis, simplifying its corporate structure is a priority. The data project is seen as key to this - not least to remain competitive in an increasingly digitalized banking environment.